The ultimate thing about Quirk! the card game is the ability to make sounds and actions to win cards from other players.
When it comes to making the app, we had to replace acting out cards with the animations BUT that does means the app includes sounds... where possible the sound effects in the game for winning a Quirk have been recorded by real people acting out that character. In other places the sound added to the character may be a sound clip of the actual animal.
Embarrassingly, since we are a small studio with a lean budget, most of the impressions you hear in the game will be me (Emma, the creator of Quirk!). This was one nights worth of work sat in the shed at the end of the garden, recording each sound on my sound recorder.
Even though I was alone, I was still embarrassed! I think the fun of Quirk is that when you play, everyone is being silly and making all kinds of sounds, so you're in great weird company. When you're alone in your own weird company and afraid if the neighbours can hear you, then it's a little bit embarrassing but for the app development it was well worth it!
Apart from my impressions, there are a few other impressions that I've managed to get from other people, including my nephews and my mum!
We also recorded some amazing impressions by the awesome Savannah Davenport from Gibsons Games when we were at the UK Games Expo at the end of July 2021. I hope we get to use some of her voice work but the show was buzzing with so many people that I may lose the sound quality in editing. I'll give it a go and hope for the best!
Edit: I got to work on pulling out Savannah's impressions from the show and had success with cutting out the background noise! Savannah's voice acting appears in the Grey Deck on the app as, Mermaid, Unicorn, Dragon and Ninja.
The joy for the app would be to get so many different people's impressions into the game and eventually randomise each character so you hear something different each time. We're not at that stage yet because of so much work on the games functionality, it will have to be an update for a later version.
We've been having so much fun creating the functionality of the card game that we almost forgot about sound!
This is where I had to take myself out early morning to capture the sounds of birds and the waves from the beach. In the app, we have tried to use as many of our own original sounds as possible!
We decided to have most of the background sounds as ambient nature sounds so you feel calm while playing the game, plus it helps you hear the sound effects when the game plays.
There's only two soundtracks we've used so far that don't follow the nature sounds, which is an epic soundtrack for the grey deck and the music we've used for the home screen.
We were keen to hire a music producer to develop our own unique soundtrack for the Quirk world. We started talking to someone about sound design but unfortunately due to our project delays, we don't have the time to commit to liaising on the new tracks.
Below capturing the sounds from the waves!
Right now, we are figuring out additional sound effects and when to play them. Within a game of Quirk, people will tell you to go Quirk throughout the game. When playing the app we found this becomes seriously annoying very quickly, all of these decisions then create even more work for us, so our solution is to come up with a few more sounds we can randomise when you are told to "Go Quirk!" This will be our next task on sound.
From the Creative Director,
Emma May
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Get your copy of Quirk! The Laugh-Out-Loud Family Card Game from Gibsons, John Lewis or Amazon.
A game full of sounds, actions and mischief to make your family roar with laughter. Great for children as young as 5 and adults of any age who love to unleash their inner child!
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